The pawn-shop guitar that built a songwriter

Joan Armatrading was born in Basseterre, in what was then the British colony of Saint Christopher and Nevis, the third of six children. At three she was sent to live with her grandmother on Antigua while her parents moved to Birmingham, England, and she joined them there at seven. Her father had once played in a band, but he forbade his children from touching his guitar.

So she found other routes. Around fourteen she began setting her own limericks to music on a piano her mother had bought as “a piece of furniture”. Her mother also swapped two prams at a pawn shop for a guitar worth three pounds, and Armatrading taught herself to play. She left school at fifteen to help support the family, and lost her first job as a typist after taking her guitar to work and playing it during tea breaks.

By 1968 she was in a touring production of the musical Hair, where she met lyricist Pam Nestor. Together they made her debut album Whatever’s for Us, released on Cube Records in 1972; Armatrading wrote all the music, sang every vocal and played an array of instruments. Cube saw her as the likelier star, and that tension broke up the partnership. She appeared on John Peel’s BBC Radio 1 show in 1972, but her first single, “Lonely Lady”, failed to chart and she spent a period inactive while freeing herself from the contract before signing to A&M.

Her first major commercial success came with her third and fourth albums, Joan Armatrading in 1976 and Show Some Emotion in 1977. “Love and Affection” comes from that breakthrough period. She has since been nominated for three Grammys and twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist, won an Ivor Novello Award in 1996, and she still plays live and records studio albums.